A good day to release

A good day to release

July 19, 2024

Hello!

These Fridays are coming around faster each week! Here are a few notes on what's been happening here.

-[ Contrafibularities ]-
UPDATE brain SET sql = 'current'

Simon pointed out that the RSS feed for this newsletter seemed a bit wonky. Articles had the wrong publication date. It seems the pubDate for some newsletters was completely wrong.

After rummaging around in the Listmonk source I found the archive template used to generate the feed. It uses SendAt as the pubDate, if valid. I busted out pgsql and (after a little trial and error) crafted SELECT id, subject, send_at FROM campaigns WHERE send_at IS NOT NULL;

listmonk=> SELECT id, subject, send_at FROM campaigns WHERE send_at 
           IS NOT NULL;
 id |            subject              |        send_at
----+---------------------------------+--------------------------+
  6 | Ten Thousand Lines of VBA       | 
  5 | ✘ UK/US Politics-Free Zone ⤵   | 
  3 | 📨 The start of something small | 2024-06-26 14:00:00+00
  4 | 📨  My Doctor prescribed a book | 2024-06-28 11:00:00+00
(4 rows)

I clearly sent those newsletters, so I couldn't fathom why they wouldn't have a send_at in the database. Then I realised, the first couple of newsletters were scheduled ahead of time. The next two were sent by me pressing the big 'Start campaign' button which sends the mails out immediately. Listmonk appears not to set the send_at column under that circumstance.

So, after a quick 'bodge the database in production' operation, it's all fixed.

listmonk=> UPDATE campaigns SET send_at = '2024-07-12 13:04:00+00' 
          WHERE id = '6';
UPDATE 1
listmonk=> UPDATE campaigns SET send_at = '2024-07-05 13:05:00+00' 
           WHERE id = '5';
UPDATE 1
listmonk=> SELECT id, subject, send_at FROM campaigns WHERE send_at 
           IS NOT NULL;
 id |            subject              |        send_at
----+---------------------------------+--------------------------+
  6 | Ten Thousand Lines of VBA       | 2024-07-12 13:04:00+00
  5 | ✘ UK/US Politics-Free Zone ⤵   | 2024-07-05 13:05:00+00
  3 | 📨 The start of something small | 2024-06-26 14:00:00+00
  4 | 📨  My Doctor prescribed a book | 2024-06-28 11:00:00+00
(4 rows)
`

Great success! Next time, I'll schedule the newsletter to avoid this issue. I can't remember the last time I hand-crafted a SQL query. This list uses Listmonk which stores data in a PostgreSQL database on the server. I'm amazed this crumbly old brain managed to retain some SQL! Next week, COBOL!

[Create]
Null and Void

Last week in 'A drive-by fruiting' I mentioned a minor contribution I made to update the Syft package on Void Linux. I made a mistake (commit description too long), so it failed one of their automated tests. Good to know for next time. Soon after, the regular maintainer updated the package, having failed to notice my update.

What have we learned from this? I wasn't aware of the '80 character commit description' requirement. I thought maybe I'd missed it in the contributing guide, but having looked again, I don't see any mention of it. So I thought I'd file an issue to get that documented. Interestingly, the issue template that I hadn't seen last week says this:

  Don't request an update of a package, We have a script for that:
  https://repo-default.voidlinux.org/void-updates/void-updates.txt
  However, a quality pull request may help.

Looking into the historical update log I can indeed see the updates done by the primary maintainer of Syft there. So I could have just left it, and their bot would have picked up the update anyway.

Having done some deb and snap packaging over the years, I find it interesting to peer into the world of other packaging systems. I'm not so much a developer of new software, but I'll contribute to packaging up someone elses code if I can help.

This exercise was valuable for me because I learned a few things about Void.

[Consume]
legacy content

Note: This topic is a little dark to start with, but it ends on a positive note, I think.

A while back, I saw a social post from Vivek Gite, the person behind nixcraft and cyberciti.biz - a popular technology how-to and tech blog. In the post they expressed the desire for their online content to disappear after they pass away.

As I understand it, they didn't want other people benefiting from their work after they pass away. This seems wild to me. If all of humanity wanted their life's work torn down when they die then surely we would all still be living in caves.

Every person alive stands on the shoulders of the giants who came before them. We're all building a legacy, even if we may not see or appreciate it at the time.

Warning: Jarring subject change approaching.

The topic hit home for me this week when I searched for new themes for my terminal. On my work Mac, I use Alacritty as the terminal of choice. It's configured with a file called ~/.config/alacritty.toml which can hot-reload, so you can fiddle with settings and immediately see the effect.

I was sprucing up the look of Alacritty with new fonts and themes because I have started live streaming some of our work, and wanted the text to be readable and attractive. While searching, I stumbled on a video titled "Change Alacritty Colours On The Fly With a Single Command" by Old Tech Bloke.

Old Tech Bloke - A.K.A. Steve Anelay, sadly passed away in September 2023, at the age of 61. He announced that he was stepping down, and planned to leave his content online as an archive.

I didn't realise it was one of his videos until after I clicked the search result, and he started talking. I fondly remember watching some of his recorded videos or joining in with the chatter on his live streams. Steve was a lovely, knowledgeable, and articulate chap. I miss him.

Nearly a year on, a random Internet search for "alacritty colour schemes" turned up his video in the top results on the front page. I got good information (and some feels) out of that 2-year-old video. The content I make personally and for work is better - in my opinion - thanks in part to Steve's legacy.

So, thanks, Steve; I appreciate you leaving a legacy others can learn from and enjoy. I hope more people do the same. 🙏

Thanks for reading.

-- popey

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EOF